Eastern Thailand
Discover Eastern Thailand
Introduction
Eastern Thailand is the strip between Bangkok and the Cambodian border, and it does two quite different jobs. The western end is the capital’s weekend coast: Pattaya, Bang Saen and the industrial deep-water port at Laem Chabang, close enough to the city for a day trip and correspondingly busy.
Further east it empties out. Chanthaburi is the regional centre and one of the more unusual towns in Thailand — a gem-trading city where rubies and sapphires were mined and are still cut and traded on Friday to Sunday along the riverside, with a Vietnamese Catholic quarter and the largest cathedral in the country, built by refugees who arrived in the nineteenth century. The province also grows most of Thailand’s durian and mangosteen, and the fruit season from April to June is its own event.
Offshore are the islands: Koh Samet close to the mainland and easy, and further out the Koh Chang archipelago, forested and hilly, running down almost to the Cambodian border with Koh Kood and Koh Mak beyond it. The rains here run May to October and are heavier than in central Thailand; November to April is the dry season and the time everything on the islands is properly open.